"The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not." [1925]~~G. K. Chesterton

In view of the large families of the Slav native population, it could only suit us if girls and women there [Poland and Russia] had as many abortions as possible. Active trade in contraceptives ought to actually be encouraged in the Eastern territories, as we could not possibly have the slightest interest in increasing the non-German population. We must use every means to instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have several children, the expenses that they cause and the dangerous effect on womans health. It will be necessary to open special institutions for abortions [clinics] and doctors must be able to help out there in case there is any question of this being a breach of their professional ethics. - Adolf Hitler, Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier, 1941-42.

"When men cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, they will believe in anything." - G.K. Chesterton

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves. - Winston Churchill

Actually, I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory. - JRR Tolkien

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur -- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Fr. Delp, a Jesuit priest condemned to death by the Nazis in Berlin, Germany, 1945 introduces today's Good Fight. Dr. Brian Kopp returns to The Good Fight and shares with us about the link between contraception and euthenasia. They discuss the IPAB entity and other time bombs in the Affordable Care Act (popularly called "Obamacare")

My blogs

About me

I am a pro-life traditional Catholic faithful to the Magisterium, a happily married homeschooling father of three, a foot surgeon (a Podiatrist) and an occasional writer. I have written articles on a range of subjects, primarily the culture of life, medicine, and ethics, that have been published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (English Edition), New Oxford Review, The Wanderer National Catholic Weekly, LifeSiteNews.com, World Net Daily, The Catholic Register (of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown) and Podiatry Today magazine, as well as various websites, blogs and forums. I have also been a guest on several episodes of EWTN Catholic Radio's The Good Fight program in 2012.

The greatest threat facing mankind is NOT anthropogenic "climate change."

Nor is it anthropogenic environmental damage.

It most certainly is not "overpopulation." Neither is it "peak oil." Nor is it food shortages.

The greatest threat facing mankind is, however, "anthropogenic."

Because the greatest threat facing mankind is the general failure of mankind to reproduce:

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet thats busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

Its all bunk. The population bomb never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, weve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The worlds population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, its already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. Chinas One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the countrys elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, its already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals dont even go that farthey have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it werent for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern lifefrom Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulationshas pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No Ones Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

Fewer tells a monumental human story, largely ignored, but which promises to starkly change the human condition in the years to come. Never before have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly. In Fewer, Ben Wattenberg shows how and why this has occurred, and explains what it means for the future. The demographic plunge, he notes, is starkly apparent in the developed nations of Europe and Japan, which will lose about 150 million people in the next half century. Starting from higher levels, but moving with geometric speed, the demographic decline is also apparent in the less developed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Only the United States (so far) has been exempt from the birth dearth, leaving America as more than "the sole super-power." Perhaps it should be called the global "omni-power." These stark demographic changes will affect commerce, the environment, public financing, and geo-politics. Here Wattenberg lists likely winners and losers. In Wattenberg's world of "The New Demography" readers get a look at a topic often chattered about, but rarely understood.

Youve heard about the Death of the West. But the Muslim world is on the brink of an even greater collapse. WILL WE GO DOWN IN THE IMPLOSION? Thanks to collapsing birthrates, much of Europe is on a path of willed self-extinction. The untold story is that birthrates in Muslim nations are declining faster than anywhere elseat a rate never before documented. Europe, even in its decline, may have the resources to support an aging population, if at a terrible economic and cultural cost. But in the impoverished Islamic world, an aging population means a civilization on the brink of total collapse something Islamic terrorists know and fear. Muslim decline poses new threats to America, challenges we cannot even understand, much less face effectively, without a wholly new kind of political analysis that explains how desperate peoples and nations behave. In How Civilizations Die, David P. Goldmanauthor of the celebrated Spengler column read by intelligence organizations worldwidereveals how, almost unnoticed, massive shifts in global power are remaking our future.

Remarkably, most conventional wisdom about the shifting balance of world power virtually ignores one of the most fundamental components of power: population. The studies that do consider international security and demographic trends almost unanimously focus on population growth as a liability. In contrast, the distinguished contributors to this volumesecurity experts from the Naval War College, the American Enterprise Institute, and other think tankscontend that demographic decline in key world powers now poses a profound challenge to global stability. The countries at greatest risk are in the developed world, where birthrates are falling and populations are aging. Many have already lost significant human capital, capital that would have helped them innovate and fuel their economy, man their armed forces, and secure a place at the table of world power. By examining the effects of diverging population trends between the United States and Europe and the effects of rapid population aging in Japan, India, and China, this book uncovers increasing tensions within the transatlantic alliance and destabilizing trends in Asian security. Thus, it argues, relative demographic decline may well make the world less, and not more, secure.

Overpopulation has long been a global concern. But between modern medicine and reduced fertility, world population may in fact be shrinking--and is almost certain to do so by the time today's children retire. The troubling implications for our economy and culture include:* The possibility of a fundamentalist revival due to the decline of secular fertility* The threat to the free market as the supply of workers and consumers declines* The eventual collapse of the American health care system as inordinate expenses are incurred by an aging populationPhillip Longman's uncompromisingly sensible solutions fly in the face of traditional ideas. State intervention is necessary, he argues, to combat the effects of an aging population. We must provide incentives for young families, and we cannot close our eyes and hope for the best as an entire generation approaches retirement age.The Empty Cradle changes the terms of one of the most important environmental, economic, and social debates of our day.

The world's population is still growing, thanks to rising longevity. But fertility rates - the average number of children born per woman - are falling nearly everywhere. More and more adults are deciding to have fewer and fewer children. Worldwide, reports the UN, there are 6 million fewer babies and young children today than there were in 1990. By 2015, according to one calculation, there will be 83 million fewer. By 2025, 127 million fewer. By 2050, the world's supply of the youngest children may have plunged by a quarter of a billion, and will amount to less than 5 percent of the human family. The reasons for this birth dearth are many. Among them: As the number of women in the workforce has soared, many have delayed marriage and childbearing, or decided against them altogether. The Sexual Revolution, by making sex readily available without marriage, removed what for many men had been a powerful motive to marry. Skyrocketing rates of divorce have made women less likely to have as many children as in generations past. Years of indoctrination about the perils of "overpopulation" have led many couples to embrace childlessness as a virtue. Result: a dramatic and inexorable aging of society. In the years ahead, the ranks of the elderly are going to swell to unprecedented levels, while the number of young people continues to dwindle. The working-age population will shrink, first in relation to the population of retirees, then in absolute terms. A world without children will be a poorer world - grayer, lonelier, less creative, less confident. Children are a great blessing, but it may take their disappearance for the world to remember why.

Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family (DVD/ Documentary) by Rick Stout

Product Overview One of the most ominous events of modern history is quietly unfolding. Social scientists and economists agree - we are headed toward a demographic winter which threatens to have catastrophic social and economic consequences. The effects will be severe and long lasting and are already becoming manifest in much of Europe.

A groundbreaking film, Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family, reveals in chilling soberness how societies with diminished family influence are now grimly seen as being in social and economic jeopardy.

Demographic Winter draws upon experts from all around the world - demographers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, civic and religious leaders, parliamentarians and diplomats. Together, they reveal the dangers facing society and the worlds economies, dangers far more imminent than global warming and at least as severe. These experts will discuss how:

The population bomb not only did not have the predicted consequences, but almost all of the developed countries of the world are now experiencing fertility rates far below replacement levels. Birthrates have fallen so low that even immigration cannot replace declining populations, and this migration is sapping strength from developing countries, the fertility rates for many of which are now falling at a faster pace than did those of the developed countries.

The economies of the world will continue to contract as the human capital spoken of by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker, diminishes. The engines of commerce will be strained as the workers of today fail to replace themselves and are burdened by the responsibility to support an aging population.

Government programs will slow-bleed by the decrease in tax dollars received from an ever shrinking work force. The skyrocketing ratio of the old retirees to the young workers will render current-day social security systems completely unable to support the aging population.

Our attempts to modernize through social engineering policies and programs have left children growing up in broken homes, with absentee parents and little exposure to extended family, disconnected from the generations, and these children are experiencing severe psychological, sociological and economic consequences. The intact familys immeasurable role in the development and prosperity of human societies is crumbling.

The influence of social and economic problems on ever shrinking, increasingly disconnected generations will compound and accelerate the deterioration. Our children and our childrens children will bear the economic and social burden of regenerating the human capital that accounts for 80% of wealth in the economy, and they will be ill-equipped to do so.

Is there a tipping point, after which the accelerating consequences will make recovery impossible without complete social and economic collapse? Even the experts cant tell us how far we can go down this road, oblivious to the outcomes, until we reach a point where sliding into the void becomes unpreventable.

Only if the political incorrectness of talking about the natural family within policy circles is overcome will solutions begin to be found. These solutions will necessarily result in policy changes, changes that will support and promote the natural, intact family.

Just as it took the cumulative involvement of activist organizations, policy makers, the business world and the media to create the unintended consequences we are beginning to experience, so it will take the holistic contribution of all of these entities, together with civic and religious organizations, to change the hearts and minds of all of society to bring about a reversal.

It may be too late to avoid some very severe consequences, but with effort we may be able to preclude calamity. Demographic Winter lays out a forthright province of discussion. The warning voices in this film need to be heard before a silent, portentous fall turns into a long, hard winter.

Demography is destiny. But not always in the way we imagine, begins Pearce (When the Rivers Run Dry) in his fascinating analysis of how global population trends have shaped, and been shaped by, political and cultural shifts. He starts with Robert Malthus, whose concept of overpopulationexplicitly of the uneducated and poor classesand depleted resources influenced two centuries of population and environmental theory, from early eugenicists (including Margaret Sanger) to the British colonial administrators presiding over India and Ireland. Pearce examines the roots of the incipient crash in global population in decades of mass sterilizations and such government interventions as Mao's one child program. Many nations are breeding at less then replacement numbers (including not only the well-publicized crises in Western Europe and Japan, but also Iran, Australia, South Africa, and possibly soon China and India). Highly readable and marked by first-class reportage, Pearce's book also highlights those at the helm of these vastly influential decisionsthe families themselves, from working-class English families of the industrial revolution to the young women currently working in the factories of Bangladesh.

What is the impact of demographics on the prospective production of military power and the causes of war? This monograph analyzes this issue by projecting working-age populations through 2050; assessing the influence of demographics on manpower, national income and expenditures, and human capital; and examining how changes in these factors may affect the ability of states to carry out military missions. It also looks at some implications of these changes for other aspects of international security. The authors find that the United States, alone of all the large affluent nations, will continue to see (modest) increases in its working-age population thanks to replacement-level fertility rates and a likely return to vigorous levels of immigration. Meanwhile, the working-age populations of Europe and Japan are slated to fall by as much as 10 to 15 percent by 2030 and as much as 30 to 40 percent by 2050. The United States will thus account for a larger percentage of the population of its Atlantic and Pacific alliances; in other words, the capacity of traditional alliances to multiply U.S. demographic power is likely to decline, perhaps sharply, through 2050. India's working-age population is likely to overtake China's by 2030. The United States, which has 4.7 percent of the world's working-age population, will still have 4.3 percent by 2050, and the current share of global gross domestic product accounted for by the U.S. economy is likely to stay quite high.

And the primary means by which mankind has stopped reproducing are abortifacient hormonal contraceptives and abortion itself.

Martin Luther called the "Sin of Onan" marital sodomy. In the Judeo-Christian and Natural Law tradition, any sex act made deliberately infecund is no better than sodomy.

So in considering the greatest threats facing mankind, one must also consider this:

The Bible mentions only four sins which cry out to God for vengeance. Considering the source and the emphasis, we have little choice but to examine our consciences on these points. A cursory examination will not do; we must cast off our cultural preconceptions to see beyond the obvious.

Homicide

And the Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brothers blood is crying to me from the ground. (Gn 4:10) It is hardly suprising that Cains murder of Abel provides the first instance of one of these sins that cries out for Divine vengeance. While all sins disrupt the natural order in some way, those enumerated as crying out to God appear to be chosen because they strike at natures root.

It is easy to see how murder fits into this category. The unjust termination of the life of another is a profound violation of how things should be precisely because our very nature compels us to regard our own lives as precious. To take a person's life is to terminate in another what we instinctively regard as our own highest good.

Sadly, the ease with which we understand the foulness of murder may be conditioned more by our culture than by Divine Revelation. We must take care that we do not find it abhorrent only insofar as we are creatures of society, rather than creatures of God.

Abortion is a case in point.

Sodomy

Then the Lord said, Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me. (Gn 18:20-21) The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of homosexual activity. So far gone were they in this vice that the men of the town would not even accept heterosexual license with Lots daughters, both virgins, as a means of sating their lust (see 19:8-9).

Here we have another case in point for cultural conditioning. It is far more difficult for our contraceptive culture to see how contrary to nature homosexuality is. Those of us who instinctively feel its deep unnaturalness rightly react to homosexual activity with disgust, but logical arguments are unlikely to produce the same reaction in those whose instincts are damaged, blunted or rationalized away.

It is precisely in such situations that Divine Revelation is so very useful, for we cannot trust our feelings when they run counter to reality. We require a better guide. Sodomy strikes at the root of human nature because of its perversion of the procreative impulse, without which the race must die. But in case we dont see it, God does.

Oppression of Widows and Orphans

You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you do afflict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. (Ex 21-23) There is a deep truth in this passage about the relationships of husbands to wives, and of parents to children, and about how vulnerable wives and children become when their natural protection is removed.

Very probably all of us can see that it would be gravely sinful to take advantage of the weakness and vulnerability of either a widow or an orphan, and we can readily imagine the financial burdens and solicitation of favors with which either can be afflicted. It is much easier in every way to abuse a boy or girl who has no father and to intimidate a woman who has no husband.

Once again, however, we must remove our social blinders to see the great evil in our culture which turns so many into widows and orphans in the first place. The grave sin of divorce, by which natural protection is ripped away from women and children, surely tops the list of horrors under this heading.

Cheating Laborers of Their Due

You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brethren or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns; you shall give him his hire on the day he earns it, before the sun goes down (for he is poor, and sets his heart upon it); lest he cry against you to the Lord, and it be a sin in you. (Dt 24:14-15) Here we come to a principle of sound social order: those in positions of authority and wealth have serious obligations to those who depend on their decisions for their well-being. Fortunately, we live in a very wealthy society.

But does our very wealth cause this sin to appear irrelevant? Free enterprise is an excellent system, but too often it carries the completely unnecessary baggage of a callous attitude toward employees, regarding them as commodities. The social teachings of the Church have attempted to address this concern (without pointing at all toward socialism) for over a century.

Yet the latest trend, at least in the United States, is constant mergers and buyouts which throw hundreds of thousands out of work while enriching an elite few. Even temporary unemployment is both a bank-breaker and a heart-breaker. Working under an abusive or negligent boss can be a living nightmare. And most of us are well-shielded from adults who must work for a minimal wage. The Israelites were urged to remember their days in Egypt, and treat others accordingly.

Together and In Order

All of these sins cry out to God, but the four are not equal. The sequence in the text suggests a hierarchy of value, and it is a tightly linked hierarchy. One sin leads to another, from the gravest to the least, as we make objects out of persons and treat them accordingly, subverting all our natural relationships. For this reason, we cannot assuage our consciences by attending to the fourth sin while ignoring the first, or by claiming virtue on the third and closing our eyes to the second. If these sins cry out to God for vengeance and we still commit them or do nothing to restrict them in others, we mock God to His face. Of course, when were wearing our usual cultural blinders, it often appears to us that we can mock God with impunity. But isnt this something else we know from Revelationin case we cannot see it for ourselves?

The Obama administration would do well to recall these foundational principles before trying to force the only Church in the world still fighting for the future of humanity, and against this greatest threat to it, to cave in and pay for contraception and abortifacients

(Note: The quotes of the early church fathers can be researched in their entirety, courtesy of Calvin College.)

191 AD - Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor of Children

"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted." (2:10:91:2) "To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (2:10:95:3).

307 AD - Lactantius - Divine Institutes

"[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . .or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife" (6:20)

"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (6:23:18).

325 AD - Council of Nicaea I - Canon 1

"[I]f anyone in sound health has castrated [sterilized] himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy"

375 AD - Epiphanius of Salamis - Medicine Chest Against Heresies

"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (26:5:2 ).

391 AD - John Chrysostom - Homilies on Matthew

"[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father's old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live [sterilization]" (28:5).

393 AD - Jerome - Against Jovinian

"But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?" (1:19).

419 AD - Augustine - Marriage and Concupiscence

"I am supposing, then, although are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility [oral contraceptives] . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife" (1:15:17).

522 AD - Caesarius of Arles - Sermons

"Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion [an oral contraceptive] so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a women does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman" (1:12).

Martin Luther (1483 to 1546) -

"Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest or adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes into her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed."

John Calvin (1509 to 1564) -

Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully has thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race.

John Wesley (1703 to 1791) -

"Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body, of the wife he had married and the memory of his brother that was gone, refused to raise up seed unto the brother. Those sins that dishonour the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord - And it is to be feared, thousands, especially single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls.

(Examining sermons and commentaries, Charles Provan identified over a hundred Protestant leaders (Lutheran, Calvinist, Reformed, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Evangelical, Nonconformist, Baptist, Puritan, Pilgrim) living before the twentieth century condemning non- procreative sex. Did he find the opposing argument was also represented? Mr. Provan stated, "We will go one better, and state that we have found not one orthodox [protestant]theologian to defend Birth Control before the 1900's. NOT ONE! On the other hand, we have found that many highly regarded Protestant theologians were enthusiastically opposed to it." )

In 1908 the Bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting at the Lambeth Conference declared, "The Conference records with alarm the growing practice of the artificial restriction of the family and earnestly calls upon all Christian people to discountenance the use of all artificial means of restriction as demoralising to character and hostile to national welfare."

The Lambeth Conference of 1930 produced a new resolution, "Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, complete abstinence is the primary and obvious method..." but if there was morally sound reasoning for avoiding abstinence, "the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles."

1930 AD - Pope Pius XI - Casti Conubii (On Christian Marriage)

"Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin."

1965 AD - Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II

Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law. (51)

1968 AD - Pope Paul VI - Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life)

Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman. Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, propose, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible. To justify conjugal acts made intentionally infecund, one cannot invoke as valid reasons the lesser evil, or the fact that such acts would constitute a whole together with the fecund acts already performed or to follow later, and hence would share in one and the same moral goodness. In truth, if it is sometimes licit to tolerate a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil to promote a greater good, it is not licit, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil so that good may follow therefrom; that is to make into the object of a positive act of the will something which is intrinsically disorder, and hence unworthy of the human person, even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social well-being. Consequently it is an error to think that a conjugal act which is deliberately made infecund and so is intrinsically dishonest could be made honest and right by the ensemble of a fecund conjugal life. (14)

1993 AD - Catechism of the Catholic Church

"The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)." (2399)

When we taught NFP, I really hammered the concept that NFP is only morally licit when used for grave reasons. We even had a couple walk out on our class because of that talk.

Here's the way I explained it on an old Catholic forum:

NFP CAN BE and often IS used, and even TAUGHT, in a sinful manner. Yet it is NOT and can NEVER be inherently sinful as artificial contraception is so.

NFP itself is NOT inherently sinful, and anyone claiming otherwise is not only misrepresenting post-conciliar but also pre-conciliar Catholic moral theology.

To say that NFP is ALWAYS sinful is just as wrong as to say that NFP is NEVER sinful.

If my "INTENTION" is to bring home enough money to feed my family, that is a good thing. I may get a job, bring home my salary, and feed my children. The job is a licit way to achieve a licit thing.

On the other hand, I could rob a bank and get enough money to feed my family for a whole year. That is an illicit way of achieving a licit good thing.

The same is true for child spacing. If my children would literally starve if my wife were to get pregnant, it is morally licit to space children until I could afford to feed them.

NFP would be a morally licit way to acieve this necessity.

But artificial birth control is intrinsically evil. It can never be morally licit to have recourse to artificiaql contraception.

So to answer your question, the INTENTION in having recourse to EITHER artificial family planning OR "natural" family planning could be illicit or licit. One may be sinsul, one may not.

However, the method itself, in the case of artificial birth control, is intrinsically illicit, i.e. regardless of intent is it gravely sinful.

However, NFP itself is morally neutral. It becomes morally illicit when the intention itself is illicit.

4 main reasons for having recourse to NFP.

1--Physical/ mental health---a pregnancy could kill you or so physically impair you as to prevent your fulfillment of your duties in your state in life---NOT because of a widening wasteline or drooping skin! Or psychological health, i.e., mom would literally have a nervous breakdown if she became pregnant---not because she &quot;just couldn't stand being home with the little kids all day without the personal fulfillment of her professional job...&quot;

2--Financial constraints---your child will starve if you have another. Wanting a bigger house or designer SUV just does not cut it!

3--work on the mission fields by one or both spouses that would proclude having children temporarily

4--active persecution or war---i.e., you or your child likely to die by coercive abortion, in concentration camp, in acts of war, etc.

Clearly we say these reasons must be SERIOUS, not trivial. Only the couple and their confessor can truly decide what truly constitutes grave reason.

We've had couples sit through my talk on this subject and literally say, &quot;Gee, we thought we were being good Catholics just for deciding to use NFP. Now we realize we don't even have grounds for recourse to NFP,&quot; then tell us a month or two later they're pregnant.

NFP vs Contraception

Spacing children may be a desirable goal that does not violate God's laws in certain serious situations such as those outlined above. But the means of achieving the goal differ.

One is intrinsically evil (abortion, abortifacient contraception, barrier methods, sterilization) while one is morally neutral (Natural Family Planning.

In one, an act is performed (sex) but its natural outcome is artificially foiled.

In the other, no act is performed (simple abstinence during fertile times) so there IS no act, therefore the practice is morally neutral.

It is then the intention of using NFP that constitutes its relative moral licitness or illicitness.

If NFP is used in a selfish manner, it too can be sinful.

If it is used only in grave circumstances, it is not sinful.

The difference is real.

Dieting (decreasing caloric intake, the &quot;act&quot; of NOT eating) is a moral and responsible means of losing weight to maintain the body's health.

Bulimia (the ACT of eating, them vomiting) is rightly called an eating DISORDER.

An ACT is performed (eating in this case) and its natural outcome (nutrition) is foiled by expelling the food from the body.

Likewise contraception is a disorder. An ACT is performed (sex) and its natural outcome (procreation) is foiled by expelling the sperm or egg or both (abortifacient contraceptives) from the body.

Contraception is to NFP what Bulimia is to dieting.

But just as dieting can be misused (anorexia) so too can NFP be misused in a sinful manner

All of Christianity, Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic unanimously taught since the times of the Apostles that contraception was always sinful and that Onan died for it. It is incontrovertible and uncontested that this is a fact.

In 1930, the Anglicans changed their teaching on this. Back in 1930, even the secular newspaper editors at the Washington Post understood that the prohibition against contraception constituted "the plain teachings of the Bible."

Until the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 no Christian denomination had ever said that contraception could ever be objectively right. The Washington Post, in an editorial on March 22, 1931, said of the Federal Council of Churches' endorsement of Lambeth:

It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of or suppression of human life. The Church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the  scientific production of human souls.

Carried to its logical conclusion, the committees report, if carried into effect, would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be  careful and restrained is preposterous.

By the 1950s, almost all the mainstream Protestant denominations had caved on this teaching. By the early 1970s the Orthodox started wavering.

No one could seriously claim that Christianity has deepened its understanding of morality in the last 50 years. On the contrary, Christianity is splintering on all facets of moral theology in this period of the Great Apostasy.

Yet you honestly think, that by saying

I choose to take my leading and message from God's Holy Scriptures and the indwelling Holy Spirit who leads us to all truths. I find when I obey Him, I am at peace with the decisions I have made.

that you have given yourself a free pass on the 2000 year unanimous teaching of Christianity on contraception, a teaching that was only ever questioned during this current age of Great Apostasy?

* "Birth Control, as popularly understood today and involving the use of contraceptives, is one of the most repugnant of modern aberrations, representing a 20th century renewal of pagan bankruptcy."

 Dr. Walter A. Maier, Concordia Lutheran Theological

Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

The Methodist Church

* "The whole disgusting [birth control] movement rests on the assumption of man's sameness with the brutes. ... Its [the Federal Council of Churches] deliverance on the matter of birth control has no authorization from any churches representing it, and what it has said I regard as most unfortunate, not to use any stronger words. It certainly does not represent the Methodist Church, and I doubt if it represents any other Protestant Church in what it has said on this subject."

 Bishop Warren Chandler, Methodist Episcopal Church South,

April 13, 1931.

The Presbyterian Church

* "Its [Federal Council of Churches] recent pronouncement on birth control should be enough reason, if there were no other, to withdraw from support of that body, which declares that it speaks for the Presbyterian and other Protestant churches in ex cathedra pronouncements."

 The Presbyterian, April 2, 1931.

The Catholic Church

* "In order that she [the Catholic Church] may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, she raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through our mouth proclaims anew:any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin."

 Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, December 31, 1930, Section 4,

Paragraph 4.



* "Since a week ago last Saturday we can no longer expect them to defend the law of God. These sects will work out the very logic of their ways and in fifty or one hundred years there will be only the Church and paganism. We will be left to fight the battle alone  and we will."

 Father Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America.

"Comments ..... and Comments On the Report of The Federal

Council of Churches of Christ in America." The American Birth

Control League's Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4

(April 1931), page 143.



* "Liberal Protestantism is really (so it seems to us and we speak with all respect for the noble solicitude it displays for human welfare, its passion for the building up of a better order of society) a new religion, but it is no longer Protestantism  it is pagan humanitarianism, it is the creed of social service built on shifting and unstable experiments, but not on the demonstrated facts of materialistic science."

 Editorial from The Commonweal of March 29, 1931. "Comments .....

and Comments on the Report of The Federal Council of Churches

of Christ in America." The American Birth Control League's Birth

Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4 (April 1931), page 142.

The Secular Press

* "Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee's report, if carried into effect, would sound the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be "careful and restrained" is preposterous."

The dark area onthe first map show the 1933 Nazi vote in Germany, the sencond show the distribution of Catholics in the 1932 census, it clearly shows Catholics didn't vote for Hitler.

(Zenit.org).- Catholics resisted Nazism during the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and if they didn't do it in a more decisive way, it was because of "a certain inferiority complex."

This is the thesis put forth by Austrian historian Martin Kugler during a conference titled "Sophie Scholl: Catholic Resistance to Nazism." The talk formed part of the 3rd International Film and Family Show, held in Tuesday in Barcelona and organized by CinemaNet.

The event focused on the 2005 German film "Sophie Scholl: The Last Days," which recounts the true story of Scholl, a 21-year-old member of the anti-Nazi, non-violent student group the White Rose.

Kugler is the founder of Europe4Christ.net, a multi-confessional and socio-political movement to fight moral relativism.

The Austrian historian explained that this "Catholic inferiority complex" and "fear" are analogous to the situation of Catholics today.

On the other hand, Kugler explained that Pius XII "loved the German people" and never approved of the Nazi regime.

The historian pointed out that "in 40 out of 44 speeches of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli -- the future Pius XII -- as nuncio in Germany, there were criticisms of totalitarianism and racism."

"And if it was not more decisive when he was Pope it was because of his concern to not cause a greater persecution of Catholics, given the fact that there had been experiences of this kind," affirmed Kugler.

In light of this, "to say that he was anti-Semitic and in favor of Hitler is ridiculous," he affirmed, saying that the Holy See's diplomacy saved at least 700,000 Jews from the Holocaust during the Second World War.